


Wooden Ravens and Shared Stars

by lostgansey



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, post-trk, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:52:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7370008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostgansey/pseuds/lostgansey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's gotta get easier someday, right?"</p>
<p>(It's five a.m., and Adam misses Ronan)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wooden Ravens and Shared Stars

Adam finished his essay three hours later than expected. It had taken all of his willpower to focus on college lately, and he was terrified about it, but couldn’t change it no matter how hard he tried.

He didn’t know why he was feeling this way. He couldn’t understand anything. 

It was 6:21. Impossible. He checked again. 4:57. He was too tired for this. 

Cabeswater reached for him then, or rather, he reached for Cabeswater, chasing stillness. But Cabeswater was gone. It had been gone for more than a year now. 

He closed his eyes, diving right into the feeling he’d been trying to ignore all night. Something inside him hurt. Logically, it didn’t make sense, but, unlike his head, his body had never cared much for logic. It couldn’t afford to, as it had had to get used to function even after being pushed beyond any decent amount of exhaustion. 

Packing his bag took twice as long as it usually did. His lungs felt heavy and raw and empty. It made sense. He hadn’t breathed since the last week of November. It had been two weeks since then. Just one more to go. 

Adam slung his bag over his shoulder and made his way through the library. Finals week was right around the corner, and so the place was very busy considering it was five a.m. 

The campus coffee shop was opening when he walked past in the way to his dorm, and the barista guy with the shaved head waved at him. His eyes weren’t the right shade of blue, his shoulders weren’t wide enough. Adam felt as though his chest had been ripped open. 

He finally got to his room and unlocked the door. It was a single, with only one bed in the middle of the far wall and a desk and barely enough space to walk between the two. He dropped his bag on the desk and was about to move to get out of his sweatpants when his eyes landed on the small raven carved in wood. He picked it up and it began to play the same eerie, lovely tune the toy car had so many months ago. 

_This is so I can make sure you’ll think of me, sometime._ The words ran like a record through his memory.

Adam had to sit. 

He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and let out a ragged breath. The emptiness inside of him was unbearable.

Nine hours. 

He stood up, grabbed the keys and walked downstairs and off the building, into the parking lot. His car was unlocked, as it always was, and he’d already twisted the keys in the ignition when he realised what he was doing and stopped. 

The engine’s loud growl and hesitant bucking cut off immediately and Adam found himself crushed and tiny under the silence. He reached for the keys, but doubted before getting them. 

Nine hours. 

His entire body begged. Every nerve and each hair. His spine wanted a different bed, his torso imagined a place in between a specific pair of arms, his hands itched for smooth skin, his ear remembered whispered promises, his heart choked, longing for its home. 

Nine hours. He could picture it. 

He let his forehead fall against the steering wheel and his hands tighten around it until his knuckles were white. The smell of hot leather was intense, and the scent of gasoline got stronger because he was closer to the engine. _He would love it._ Adam let out a shaky laugh that barely broke the silence, a tiny bitter thing that ripped through his chest nonetheless. 

One more week. Just one. He could do it, he had to be strong. 

He lay back, letting his head hit the headrest violently and punched the Honda symbol in the middle of the steering wheel. He wanted to cut his sternum in half and snatch his hear out of its place in the middle of his lungs if only to get rid of this absolute misery. 

Fracture lines ran all through his being, leaving him incomplete, but not letting him set himself free and break once and for all. He sighed heavily and felt no relief from it. Normal. He’d breath again in a week. 

He left the car and the last of his body’s hope died down. It would have to wait. 

A narrow fire staircase lead to the roof, and he climbed it instead of going back inside. The sun would rise soon enough. He lay on his back, looking at the sky. Elsewhere, in a place built on magic and love, he had done the same thing. His eyes remembered. Five hundred miles away and several degrees higher on the light pollution scale, his eyes remembered. 

The hard concrete behind his back made it impossible to ignore that his phone was digging painfully into his hip. He pulled it out of his pocket and stared at the black screen. 

Adam could call. It would be so easy, pressing the first contact on his favourites list so he could listen to his voice. But they had already done that, six hours before. He didn’t want to be an inconvenience. But he needed…

He swallowed, unlocked the phone, let his finger hover over the name. No. He had to be stronger, he _was_ stronger. He’d already made it all those months, damn it. 

Adam didn’t want him to think he was unhappy. He wasn’t unhappy. But on nights like this, not even college was enough. On nights like this, Adam just wanted to be with him, curl into his side and let him be his home, if only for the night. 

The phone rang. He didn’t even let it ring twice.

“Ronan,” he sighed. 

“Did I wake you?” Ronan whispered, sounding uncertain. Adam swore he could cry. 

“No, I,” he stopped, swallowed. “I was about to call you.”

The line went silent for a second. A second where Adam held his breath, ordered his throat to stop aching, organised what he could and couldn’t say. He heard Ronan breath shakily and his heart twisted. 

“Adam,” he said, then stopped. Adam’s eyes burned. He pressed them closed.

Another silence. Adam wanted to break it, but he couldn’t. His throat was knotted, his words would get away from him, he was sure. 

Ronan took a deep breath. He said: “It’s gotta get easier someday, right?” His voice was a tiny, fragile thing. Adam couldn’t take it anymore. He laughed, but it came out as a dry sob. The line carried Ronan’s ragged breath. 

“I almost drove back to Henrietta tonight,” he answered. 

They listened to each other’s breath. Ronan waited for Adam’s to even out before speaking again.

“Where are you?” he asked. 

“I– The roof.” 

“So am I.”

Adam opened his eyes. The sky was dark still, and if he squinted, he could make out the stars. It was a full moon. 

“What can you see?” he asked. 

“Everything,” Ronan answered. “It’s dark but I can see the outline of the mountains. And the stars. And the moon.”

Yes. Adam imagined the mountains, remembered what the stars looked like over the Barns. His lips twitched. He zoomed in, pictured Ronan on his back, an arm folded behind his head, wearing that smirk. 

“What else?” he asked, softly. 

“Opal’s miniature tractor. She left it there this morning. What a brat.” 

Adam chuckled. Opal, running around the fields, Ronan, pretending to be mad at her. The mountains, the stars, that smirk. 

Home. 

“I miss you,” he whispered. It was a secret, a fact he kept tucked very carefully inside his ribcage, finally let out. “I miss home.”

“God, Adam,” Ronan said, as if it pained him. “I have driven halfway to Cambridge twice this week.”

What would it have been like if he’d made it? Adam’s chest tightened.

“One week. As soon as I finish my last exam I’ll be on my way. I promise. I’m coming home.”

“Not today, though.” Ronan’s voice had gotten small again, as if he were afraid to say it, but had to in order not to go crazy. Knowing him, that was probably the case. Adam sat up, hugged his legs close to his chest with his free arm and hid his head between his knees. He pressed his phone harder against his ear. 

“No, not today,” he swallowed. “But… by this time next week I’ll be there. And I’ll be with you for three weeks and this whole thing won’t even matter.” He was trying to sooth himself as much as he was trying to sooth Ronan. 

“I can’t wait,” Ronan said. 

Adam knew he ought to hang up. The sun would rise soon, and he really needed to sleep for three hours at least if he wanted to have a mildly productive study session. Five hours if he actually wanted to remember what he’d studied. But he couldn’t bring himself to. 

“There’s this guy who works at Starbucks,” he started, not knowing why he was bringing it up, but feeling the need to keep Ronan on the phone for as long as he could. “And he looks so much like you.”

“Well damn, Parrish, lucky you. Must be quite the view,” he teased. Adam could practically see his smile.

“Must be quite the view,” he mimicked, with the sole purpose of hearing Ronan laugh. It worked. “Don’t flatter yourself.”   
“Smart ass,” he said back. Adam smiled. 

“That wasn’t the _point_ , asshole.”

“Enlighten me, then.” 

“The point was, I have to see him everyday when I’m on my way to class and he always waves at me and it’s _excruciating_ and he also smiles all the time and, oh, once I went in because Lou wanted to get a latte or whatever and he kept trying to strike up conversation and I almost punched something and, oh god, this other time…” Ronan was laughing so hard at this point that Adam feared for his safety a little, being on the roof and all. 

“Jesus fuck, Adam, are you done bitching? What has this poor guy ever done to you? Holy shit,” he was still laughing and Adam’s smile widened. 

“He’s not you, idiot,” he answered, feigning annoyance, as if it should have been obvious and rolled his eyes before remembering Ronan couldn’t see him. 

“Yeah, well, not everyone can be this lucky. I’m touched, though.” 

Adam shook his head and lay back down. 

“God, you’re so annoying,” he teased. This sent Ronan on a new fit of laughter. 

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Hmm, how can we fix this problem?” he pretended to think for a second before clicking his tongue. “Got it. I’m coming to college. Get the fuck ready, Harvard.”

It was Adam’s turn to laugh. He rolled onto his stomach and came up on his elbows.

“Yes! What are you gonna study?”

“Law, duh. I’ll graduate first of my class and become that one lawyer who only works on difficult divorces because they’re good money, and whom female clients in their fifties fall in love with but can’t have. I can see it, I can see it.”

Adam laughed harder. 

“They’ll try to seduce you more than once and take you home, but joke’s on them because their son your age will be the one to get you.”

“Nah. I think it’s pretty safe to say I’ll be off the market by then. What do you say?” Adam’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much. 

“Are you proposing? I’m flattered. Future hotshot lawyer asks me to marry him. What an honor. I always knew my plan of becoming a trophy husband with a sugar daddy was going to work out just fine. I’m dropping out of college tomorrow.” 

“You little fuck,” he heard Ronan’s smile and could picture it perfectly. “God, I love you.”

By the time he hung up and went back to his room, his insides felt fuzzy and warm, and he fell asleep easily, with a tiny wooden raven clutched in his hand. 

That night, Adam didn’t dream.

**Author's Note:**

> Man, being in a long-distance relationship must be so hard. Thanks for reading <3 Find me on [tumblr](http://www.lostgansey.tumbr.com) screaming over gay boys sometimes and crying over Adam Parrish always and hit me up!


End file.
